Fed Members Needed!

The Eccles Building (wikimedia)
I guess the Fed actually needs a Vice Chair, so Donald Kohn’s retirement is leading to some suggests that Barack Obama might actually trouble himself to appoint a successor:
Possible Kohn successors, according to Fed watchers and former officials, include Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo, 57, who’s backed tougher bank regulation; Christina Romer, 51, an architect of the administration’s 2009 fiscal stimulus; and San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen, 63, one of the central bank’s top advocates of lower interest rates.
The article, however, is oddly unclear about the fact that there are already two vacancies on the Fed’s Board of Governors. You could add Romer and Yellen and you’d still need a Vice Chair. Or you could promote Tarullo to Vice Chair, and add Romer and Yellen, and still be left with one vacancy to fill. The Fed is incredibly non-transparent, so nobody is ever quite sure how much of a difference the non-Chair members of the board really make, but the Fed as an institution is arguably the most important element of the government. It’s absurd that we have all these politicians and political journalists and operatives running around Washington yelling “jobs” while nobody is talking about the decision-making body with the largest influence on the employment level in the United States.
At any rate, those three all sound like fine choices, but what I’d really like to see is a Fed Board slot given to Joe Gagnon who’s articulated a serious plan for central bank-led job-creation. I also think this would count as a demotion for Christina Romer, so it might make more sense to consider her husband David.

Related

Janet Yellen was sworn in Monday as the chairman of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors in Washington, while her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke, joined the Brookings Institution as a distinguished fellow in residence.
The announcements completed a leadership transition, with Yellen becoming top policy maker as the Fed tries to wean financial markets off a bond purchase program that has pushed up central bank assets to $4.1 trillion. She is scheduled next week to report on monetary policy in semi-annual testimony before the House and Senate.

Like almost everybody who doesn't actually work at the White House, I didn't want Larry Summers to be the next Federal Reserve Chairman, and this afternoon I've gotten my wish. Well, actually I've only gotten part of my wish.

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen is the most qualified and most likely candidate to run the central bank, according to the majority of private economists in a Bloomberg News survey that showed Lawrence Summers trailing by wide margins in both categories.

More than 200 econ professors and counting have signed an open letter calling on President Obama to name Fed Board Vice Chair Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as Fed Chair. And there are some big names among them: Princeton's Alan Blinder, Berkeley's Christina Romer, Columbia's Joe Stiglitz, Yale's Robert Shiller, Michael Woodford, and San Diego's James Hamilton (who brought the letter to our attention).